The Home Depot named a leader on climate action

The Home Depot has been highlighted as a global leader on corporate climate action and continues to pursue its sustainability goals with new renewable energy initiatives in 2019.

CDP, an environmental impact non-profit, has named The Home Depot to its Climate Change "A" List for its actions to cut carbon emissions and mitigate climate risks.

Every year, thousands of companies disclose data about their environmental impacts to CDP for independent assessment and receive scores of A to D- for how effectively they are tackling climate change.

New to The Home Depot's CDP report this year is its commitment to a Science Based Target for scope one and two emissions with reduction goals. The company is aiming for a 40% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 and a 50% reduction by 2035.

"Managing carbon emissions has been a focus for Home Depot for more than 10 years," said Ron Jarvis, vice president of environmental innovation. "Our dual strategy to reduce our total energy use and create a cleaner energy portfolio has helped us to reduce our absolute carbon emissions by over 3 million metric tons since 2009."

As a part of its overall renewable energy strategy, The Home Depot is working to procure 135 megawatts of energy from various alternative sources by the end of 2020. To make additional progress toward its goal, The Home Depot is announcing major investments in wind and solar for 2019.

The Home Depot is expanding its wind-powered renewable energy program by adding a third offsite wind project. The company will purchase enough wind energy from the Pretty Prairie Wind Project in Kansas to power about 40 stores for a year. The home improvement retailer currently partners with two operating wind farms in Texas and Mexico.

The Pretty Prairie Wind Project, owned and operated by a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources, LLC, is located in Reno County, Kansas. The larger wind farm is expected to create hundreds of construction jobs, up to 20 full-time operational jobs, and provide an estimated $77 million in local community benefits.

Through a 15-year power purchase agreement, The Home Depot will purchase 15 megawatts (MW) of the wind farm's 220 MW capacity once it is operational in late 2019. The farm will feature 83 wind turbines that can produce enough power to provide more than 50,000 average U.S. homes with clean electricity each year.

In addition to the Kansas, Texas and Mexico wind farms, the company also procures energy from solar farms in Delaware, Massachusetts and Minnesota with a combined annual output of 25.0 million kilowatt hours (kWh). Forty-five U.S. Home Depot stores now have operational rooftop solar systems, and the company plans to expand its residential rooftop solar offerings.